An effective video management and analysis system has been desired for people in many aspects in their daily life along with a dramatically increasing number of digital video files. With the aid of this system, people can organize video files in a personal computer more conveniently, urban traffic can be controlled effectively and video surveillance can also detect easily an abnormal event, e.g., inbreaking of a stranger, etc.
A video file is acquired from photographing by a photographer using a camera (possibly a specialized camera or a terminal device capable of photographing, e.g., a mobile phone, a portable computer, etc). Some actions of zooming, panning, etc., the camera may be performed as necessary during photographing, and these actions correspond to the motion of the camera so that different actions correspond to different types of motion. Typically a video file may include a variety of types of motion because the photographer may perform different adjustment (e.g., firstly translation, then focusing and next resting, etc.) as required during photographing.
The photographer adjusts the camera primarily in view of the extent of importance of an object of interest. For example, when the photographer puts an emphasis on photographing the action of a remote person, he or she may zoom in the camera after a lens is directed to the person to scale up the person displayed in a scene. Correspondingly, if a video file contains the type of focusing motion or the like, then the contents of the part of a video corresponding to the type of motion shall typically be of particular interest to the photographer and therefore may be important contents of the video file and even primary contents capable of representing the video file. The contents of this part can be extracted as a summary of the video file.
Therefore, effective detection of camera motion has become crucial to the video management and analysis system. Based upon the motion type of a camera during acquisition of a video, the video can be browsed more conveniently and primary contents of the video can be acquired more easily, and furthermore a summary of the video file can be acquired conveniently to serve further retrieval of the video file, etc.
The existing video management and analysis system can analyze various types of motion of a video photographing device from a video file and further acquire high-level information, e.g., photographic intention, etc. However for an analysis of the type of motion of a video photographing device from a video file in the prior art, the analysis object is a standard video file acquired from photographing and edited by a professional video photographer. Unfortunately, when the type of motion of the video photographing device is analyzed from a video file acquired from photographing by an increasing number of amateurs or an unedited video file in the method of the prior art, there frequently occurs a result of analysis which may not be sufficiently accurate or can not accurately reflect the real photographic intention of a user.